United Methodist Church Divided Over Gay Marriage

“A Church Divided: Methodists Clash Over Gay Marriage,” produced
by Amanda Winkler. About 8 minutes. Original release date was May
20, 2014 and original writeup is below. 

“The church is really trying to sweep this under the rug and
we’re pretending we’re all united, we’re the United Methodist
Church after all,” says former Methodist minister Frank Schaefer on
the division within the United Methodist Church (UMC) over the
issue of homosexuality. 

Schaefer says there was “no way in Hell” he would have declined
when he was asked to ordain his son’s same-sex wedding in 2007. “I
saw it as an act of love,” says Schaefer. 

Others within the church saw it as an act of rebellion. Former
Methodist Minister Frank Schaefer was stripped of his clerical
credentials this past December after a 13-member jury of pastors
found him guilty of disobeying church law. The UMC Book of
Discipline, which contains the church’s laws and doctrines, forbids
celebrations of same-sex marriages and asserts that the practice of
homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

While Schaefer’s defrocking may have been meant as a warning to
silence rogue pastors who disagree with the UMC Book of Discipline,
it has arguably had the opposite effect: The church now faces a
legitimate uprising by clergy members and laypeople within the
denomination who passionately disagree with the church’s stance on
homosexuality. The internal debate has been waging since 1972 when
the first language condemning homosexual practice was introduced in
the Book of Discipline. 

Schaefer is now an outspoken activist working to change
Methodist policy on gay marriage. This movement within the UMC
prompts the question: How do voluntary, private organizations
change—or refuse to change—policies about matters that are central
to their missions?

Religious practices change all the time—just ask Catholics who
celebrated mass in Latin until the 1960s or Protestant groups that
started ordaining women as ministers in the 1970s. But are there
certain core beliefs that can never change? 

Conservative theologians within the church argue that Schaefer’s
defrocking was justified because church law, by definition, must be
upheld—otherwise, it is not a church law. They maintain that
homosexuals are welcome in the church, but that one should abstain
from the practice of homosexuality. 

“The ultimate debate is not over sexuality—it’s just one battle
flag issue in the current culture wars that’s been going on in the
last 150 years between traditionalist and liberal revisionists,”
says Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a
conservative Christian think-tank in Washington, D.C. UMC is
experiencing a split in opinion on gay marriage

However, liberal theologians are a sizeable minority within the
church and have been pushing back against the restrictive language
every step of the way. Hundreds of Methodist ministers have
publicly rejected the doctrine and, like Schaefer, some face
punishment by trial for performing same-sex weddings. 

Fellow mainline protestants have already moved toward accepting
gay unions. These include the United Church of Christ and the
Episcopal Church of America. However, the Methodist church seems to
be going in the opposite direction. The margin of vote against
changing the church’s stance on homosexual unions was 61 to 39
percent at the 2012 General Conference, which meets every four
years to vote on changes within the church. This was a wider
disparity than in 2008.

The explanation has to do with the structure of the Methodist
church. The UMC is very centralized—the General Conference makes
rules for everything by way of a majority vote. This is very
different from the other mainline denominations who operate as a
loose federation of congregations with a shared tradition but not
necessarily the same doctrine or rules. The loose federation allows
the different congregations across the world more autonomy, a
structure that has helped them maintain their unity even in the
midst of disagreements on issues such as gay marriage. 

Some UMC congregations believe gay marriage should be allowed in
the Church. Congregations in the UMC have less autonomy and a
significant portion of the church lies outside of the U.S. While
membership in the U.S. is declining, overseas branches are
increasing—and these tend to be more conservative. The growing
African Church has provided the votes at the General Conference to
block any changes to the Book of Discipline liberalizing the stance
on gay marriage. 

“If the Church abandons its teaching on sexuality, there will in
fact be a much deeper division and a formal schism,” says
Tooley.

About 8 minutes.

Produced by Amanda Winkler. Camera by Todd Krainin, Joshua
Swain, and Winkler. Narrated by Todd Krainin.